Kryptonite Factor

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"Hey Superman, check out this awesome glowing rock I found! ...Supes? You okay?"

"Likewise, in fiction, whatever power a character has must have a downside somewhere, or he becomes a boring Superman type of character who can handle anything and get out of any difficulty, and he won't interest readers for long."

The more powerful a character is, the more likely the Kryptonite Factor will be abused. Writers in particular tend to dislike immensely powerful characters with a single Kryptonite Factor, because not using it creates a drama-destroying sense that the character is never under a serious threat. Conversely, working a rare Kryptonite Factor into the plot repeatedly can seem even more contrived.

The most obvious example is kryptonite, the bane of Superman regardless of how powerful he is being portrayed at the time. A literal green rock, it seemed unusually abundant in supervillainous hands for being radioactive bits of a planet that exploded lightyears away. Many Elseworlds and spin offs to the Superman mythos include characters who are more resistant to kryptonite, but conveniently, not as strong.

Examples:

Inuyasha temporarily loses all of his demon-powers on nights with a new moon.

There's also Miroku, who has a miniature black hole that is initially a game breaker. So the show introduces poisonous wasps which can kill him if he sucks them up. These practically become the villain's trademark so that only Inuyasha can be a credible threat to him.

In One Piece, anyone who has eaten a Devil Fruit has two, related Kryponite Factors: The ocean, which causes power leeching and an inability to move due to weakness, and Seastone, also known as Kairouseki or as "Sea Prism Stone", which replicates the effects of the ocean and out of which most prisons in the One Piece world are built.

The effect of Seastone and the sea itself varies from user to user: Luffy (a paramecia user) and Chopper (a zoan user) have severe and painful reactions to either but are still made of rubber (which is used to save his life when he's drowning in the ocean) and a human-zoan respectively while logia fruit users and other paramecia users are simply unable to use their powers

Smoker also has some Kairouseki on the end of his jotte, despite his being a fruit user himself (the weapon is long enough to keep him from coming into direct contact with the stone).

The Yami Yami no Mi also appears to act as kyrptonite to devil fruit users and seems to have been built just to combat them: of the 3 abilities shown so far; creating black holes (and expelling anything pulled in), pulling in devil fruit users and canceling fruit powers only the first can be used on normal people.

Busoushoku no Haki (Armament Haki) allows the person who use it to surround himself/herself with a thin air but powerful armor (it's mostly invisible until the Time Skip), allowing the user to negate devil fruit powers by contact. It does not cancel the devil fruit power itself, but it's one of the few only methods to attack and hurt logia-types. Trained Haki users can use their Busoushoku Haki for their projectile weapons or devil fruit powers.

Anpanman has a head made of bread, which is his weak point. If he breaks of too many pieces of it to feed others, or his head gets wet, dirty, bruised up, or moldy, he loses his power. Once a new head is put on, he gains all the energy he needs again.

In A Certain Magical Index, Saints are people born with physically perfect bodies similar to the Son of God. This gives them great powers like incredible levels of Super Strength, Super Speed, Super Toughness, etc. However, they are vulnerable to any of the tools that were used to torture Jesus. For example, if an ordinary person punched them or hit them with a baseball bat, they could easily shrug it off. But if a Saint was hit with a cross, crown of thorns, scourging whip, etc, the item would hurt them like it would a normal person. There are also spells designed to combat Saints, like the appropriately named "Saint Destroyer".

In Black Bullet, the monsters known as Gastrea are practically invulnerable to normal weapons, but weapons and bullets made of the metal Varanium can harm them, and monoliths made of Varanium can drive them away. However, there are Gastrea that are powerful enough to ignore the monoliths.

Due to Fantastic Racism in the series, it's been also used against cursed children who are born with the virus. A group of cursed children that Rentaro taught were killed by a bomb filled with Varanium shards.

Assassination Classroom: Revealed very early on is a rubbery material that, to humans, is about as damaging as actual rubber, while messily popping Koro-Sensei's flesh even on quick contact, and being able to kill him off if it strikes near his heart. However, this doesn't help much; you still need to make contact with it, which is easier said than done when fighting someone with a Mach 20 Flash Step.

Comic Books

Superman is the Trope Namer of course, with his weakness to Kryptonite (radioactive Green Rocks from his home planet) established back in the 40's. Since then, he's gained a few other vulnerabilities: he has only basic resistance to magic (though some authors treat magic as a bona fide weakness for him and his kin), red sun radiation can temporarily rob him of his powers, and there's a whole spectrum of coloured Kryptonite with varying effects (from Red Kryptonite that causes a random change for 48 hours, to Gold Kryptonite that robs him of his powers permanently). He can be killed by a huge amount of brute force, as seen during The Death Of Superman, though of course he turns out to be Only Mostly Dead.

Of course, Doomsday was also from Krypton, leaving the reader to wonder if that gave him some sort of edge over the Man of Steelnote the canonical answer is "no". It was mostly due to the fact that the fight dragged out into the middle of the night; without a source of solar radiation to replenish his powers and heal injuries, Superman just ran out of juice.

The Gold Kryptonite part is now "powerless for 30 seconds", mostly so it wouldn't be overused.

He even has at least three villains — Metallo, Conduit, and the Kryptonite Man — possessing powers that boil down to being Kryptonite. And now that Gold K has been Nerfed, minor villain Radion has been revised into this as well.

Superman also had problems with Red Kryptonite, special kryptonite that could randomly alter Superman's powers, doing anything from making his hair grow to actually slowly killing him.

In fact, Brainiac once used a special mix of red and green Kryptonite that gave him a third eye in the back of his head (in Action Comics #275). In order to protect his secret identity, Supes pretended that the kryptonite had addled his brain to make him wear whatever hat is near him.

In Bronze Age storyline Krypton No More, orange sun radiation can temporarily make Kryptonians blind and cut their powers in half. Superman, Supergirl and Krypto learn this the hard way as they are fighting an alien army.

Supergirl has the same weaknesses that her cousin Superman. Namely: kryptonite, red sunlight, and magic.

In the New Krypton storyline, Supergirl faced off against Reactron, an enemy powered by golden kryptonite which nullified her powers.

In the Red Daughter Of Krypton arc, Silver Banshee managed to contain Supergirl for a short while when they fought because her sonic attacks are magic, and Kryptonians are vulnerable to magic. Later on, Kara was weakened when she fought Worldkiller-1 because Earth's atmosphere was poisoned with kryptonite.

In the first Supergirl (Rebirth) story, Red Kryptonite -which is non-lethal but does weird things to Kryptonians- turns a Kryptonian into a werewolf. Supergirl's foster mother Eliza Danvers uses a red solar grenade against Lar-On when she notices he speaks Kryptonian.

Kara is vulnerable to magic because it bypasses her natural invulnerability. In Demon Spawn Nightflame's attacks hurt her because that villain is a sorcerer.

One Superboy story had him meet Mon-El, an amnesiac with powers like his, who assumed due to this that he was Kryptonian. Near the end of the story, Clark gets suspicious and lobs lead boulders painted to look like Kryptonite at him. Mon-El collapses, and Superboy flies in to accuse him of fakery — but the trauma has brought his memory back; he's a Daxamite, a member of a race similar to Kryptonians, but with a weakness to lead poisoning instead of Kryptonite. To keep him from dying, Superboy puts him in the Phantom Zone, preserving him for a thousand years until the Legion of Super-Heroes finds a cure.

Later retellings have Clark and Mon-El seeing if Mon-El was a Kryptonian (whose memories were slowly coming back) and Mon-El getting sick after Clark takes out a lead box containing some Kryptonite, mostly so it doesn't make Superboy look like a massive dick.

The color yellow was/is a major weakness to the Green Lantern Corps. This was eventually explained by the influence of a fear demon the creators of the rings had entrapped corrupting their powers, but also authorically served to constantly remind them their potential godlike power has limits (a Green Lantern Ring being otherwise limited only by the intelligence, creativity, and willpower of the wielder). When Kyle Rayner was the only Green Lantern, thanks to Hal Jordan's Brainwashed and CrazyFace–Heel Turn, his ring had no vulnerability to yellow. However, when Hal was brought Back from the Dead and the four Earth Lanterns took down Paralax, the Entity of Fear (and thus, the Yellow Impurity that prevented Lanterns from harming yellow objects), it was reinstated and Ret Conned that Lanterns can overcome the weakness by recognizing fear.

Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern, had no vulnerability to yellow, but a similar vulnerability to wood. This was due to his more magical ring being connected to "green, growing things".

This was retconned into a long story involving one of Earth's first GLs. He was mad with power, so the Guardians gave him the wood weakness so primitive humans could club him to death. However, instead of dying, he put his soul into the power ring and battery, which collided with a Meteorite, becoming the Starheart. Alan Scott got his ring from the Starheart. Seriously.

The entire 'wood weakness' may have been a Retcon itself; some of the earliest comics indicate he has 'invulnerability to metal' but not really anything else, allowing him to be, among other things, knocked unconscious by a teak vase.

It's worth noting however that because of this on-again/off-again vulnerability, the fact that Sinestro always has a yellow power ring is almost a Grandfather Clause.

Not quite. He was assumed to be dead while the fear entity was out doing whatever fear entities do.

In the Elseworlds storyline Superman & Batman: Generations, it was revealed that the yellow vulnerability was just a hoax made up by the Guardians to keep the Green Lanterns from getting too cocky. Alan Scott's wood weakness, however, was psychosomatic and imposed by himself; during his early adventures, while fighting some ruffians, one snuck up behind him and hit him with a wooden club. While the truth was that he just didn't pay attention and thus allowed the foe to get in a cheap shot, he instead convinced himself that he had a weakness to the wood and thus couldn't defend himself. Guess he had a bit of an ego going...

The Blue Lanterns are a bit different. Instead of having a weakness to another color, the Blue Lanterns are dependent on another color, namely green, in order to use their powers effectively. This is because green is the color of willpower and blue is the color of hope. You can hope all day long that something good will happen, but that won't accomplish anything unless you also have the will to help your hopes come true.

The Martian Manhunter (who is both powerful and has a variety of useful powers) has a vulnerability to fire. And a rather powerful addiction to cream-filled cookies, though this is more a comedic device. (See 2000's Martian Manhunter #24). In The Silver Age of Comic Books, fire was treated by him as equivalent to Superman versus kryptonite, but Post-Crisis, it became more of a crippling phobia. (They seem to keep going back and forth on this one.)

At least once, his fire vulnerability was explained by saying that he almost died in a fire once, and has feared it ever since. This falls apart when one considered that every Martian who's ever appeared in DC Comics has been vulnerable to fire. Current canon is that it's a genetic block implanted by the Guardians to lock away the burning Martians.

Early versions of Wonder Woman had her lose her powers if she was tied up by a man, under "Aphrodite's Law", leading to some bondage imagery that must have been blatant even at the time of its introduction. As noted in her entry, that was quite deliberate. In The Silver Age of Comic Books, she went into an Unstoppable Rage if her bracelets were removed. Currently, Wonder Woman has no Kryptonite Factor weaknesses.

Partly because she is not as invulnerable as Superman or Manhunter. Bullets can penetrate her skin if she doesn't block them with her bracers and she needs to breathe, just as examples.

She does (or at least did - her continuity is a moving target) lose her powers when she changes back to her secret identity, thanks to a spell cast by her Arch-Nemesis Circe. Which raises the question of why she ever turns back to her secret identity, given that they look exactly the same. The only possible benefit to transforming is that it saves her the trouble of changing clothes.

In one story (as in, within the past 10 years - not exactly yesterday, but well after Crisis on Infinite Earths) story, Batman defeated an Amazon footsoldier by throwing a magnetic baterang at her, which stuck her bracelets together when she blocked it and removed her powers. Suggesting both that the weakness is common to all Amazons, and that it survived into the modern age ... or possibly that whoever wrote that story was taking a few liberties.

This was actually used in one of the incarnations of Superfriends - Scarecrow had captured Wonder Woman and Robin in an attempt to lure Batman into a trap. When Bats arrived, Wonder Woman had her bracelets fused together, thus rendered powerless.

In Preacher, Jesse Custer's power of the Word (his ability to force people to do what he says) has a catch: the Word must be both heard and understood to work. Among other things, this means it doesn't work on animals, various characters avoid it by covering their ears, and at one point it's rendered moot when a squad of soldiers who only speak French are sent after him.

In X-Men, Cyclops' optic blasts can be entirely contained by even a thin sheet of ruby-quartz (and, uh, his eyelids apparently) This is used to his advantage, as he can't normally control his optic blasts at all, and so wears glasses with lenses made of the material. Occasionally a villain will strap on some ruby-quartz armor, or lock a quartz helmet on to Cyclops's head, but usually they prefer to go the route of knocking off the glasses.

His brother Alex is also immune to his powers, as is he to Alex's. This is explicitly a result of the shared Required Secondary Powers that stop them from blowing themselves up.

Colossus, one of the most powerful of the X-Men, can turn his body into living steel, and cannot be hurt by many things when he is in his metal form. The anti-metal vibranium, however, can hurt him, and when faced with a vibranium weapon, he instinctively reverts to his human form.

Wolverine, X-23 and some other fast healers in Marvel, have trouble healing when having "strange (or foreign) metals (or substances)" on their composition (such as Wolverine's adamantium skeleton, or being struck by carbonium) and thus not heal as fast (read: instantly)

The New Gods of the DCU, while far from completely invincible (with the exceptions of the stronger ones like Darkseid) are all vulnerable to the very rare element Radion. In Final Crisis Darkseid kills his son Orion with a time traveling Radion bullet. Batman later fires the same bullet into Darkseid to fatally poison him; an act that eventually leads to Darkseid's Final Death.

Common vulnerability of aquatic superheroes like Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner is the need to remain hydrated (moreso than a normal person, that is). Generally, it's relatively mild - the need to be submerged in water at least once every 24 hours, for example - and comes up more as a way for villains to keep them prisoner than as something they need to worry about on a regular basis, but it does make them extra vulnerable to villains with heat-based powers, and a Crazy-Prepared villain will always find a way to exploit it (Aquaman was once made to be afraid of water, for instance).

Aquaman's hydrophobia is especially notable because it was brought about by Batman. That was one of the stories that solidified his status as Crazy-Prepared.

There is a certain gas that can remove Spider-Man's Spider-Sense temporarily. It is often used by the goblin-based villains (Green Goblin, Hobgoblin etc.) or by Mysterio. Venom and Carnage are completely immune to the sense altogether, since their powers come from the alien suit Spider-Man wore. Removing his spider sense or being immune to it is always shown to be disastrous for Spider-Man. For instance, his Aunt May is immune to his spider-sense due to being a trusted family member. Trying to get to his bedroom, he snuck into her house one night, still dressed as Spider-Man. She managed to sneak up on him and ended up whacking him over the head with a vase, KOing him.

One of the plot points in Spider-Island was Peter temporarily losing his Spider-Sense and realizing just how much he depended on it. He spent some time training with Iron Fist to become less reliant on it.

Since he's part spider, he's more sensitive to pesticides than a regular person.

Inverted with The New 52 version of Ultraman. He gets stronger by consuming kryptonite. However, sunlight weakens him. To counter this, he creates a solar eclipse after being amped up on kryptonite.

In PS238, Superman-Captain Ersatz Atlas is vulnerable to Argonite, the irradiated remnants of his homeworld Argos. It later transpires that Argonite is a synthetic, Earth-made material created by the US military specifically as a way to keep Atlas in check. It also has the side-effect of working on allFlying Bricks, including native Earth ones like 84 and also every member of the not-at-all-destroyed Argos' noble houses.

Since the Queen of Fables gets her powers from fiction, she is weakened by anything that forces one to acknowledge the truth. Being bound by Wonder Woman's magic lasso drained her powers and caused her Rapid Aging.

Fan Works

Last Child of Krypton: Revealed when Gendo pulls a piece of kryptonite out on Shinji -who is Superman in this crossover- after the Bardiel incident.

Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: Asuka discovered she was half-kryptonian at the same time she found out about her weakness towards kryptonite. Shortly after Gendo stole the piece of kryptonite and he threatened her with it several times.

A Star Wars version here The Princess And The Pirate. The Imperial-aligned captors of Luke, Leia and Han put them in a room with some kind of small, furry mammalian creatures that somehow sap the two Force users' power and prevent them breaking out. Luke eventually solves the problem by killing them. However, it accidentally happens again later, when a young rebel thinks Leia would like one of the cute critters and lets it loose. Leia faints, but Luke's able to tell him to get it out of the area.

In Pony POV Series, a Draconequus like Discord and his family are all Reality Warpers. However, they cannot directly affect anything created by taking away something. For example: ice (created by taking away heat), despair (created by taking away hope), and the vacuum of space (created by taking away air and matter). As a result, they can be imprisoned by ice and similar substances for a time (note that although they cannot poof away ice or transmute it, they can eventually generate enough heat to melt it or break free with brute force). They are also vulnerable to the Rainbow of Light and its present day counterpart the Elements of Harmony.

Films — Animated

The title character of Bolt is a dog on a TV show who thinks his superpowers are real. When he is accidentally placed in a box and shipped to New York, he finds that he no longer has superpowers, and thinks the Styrofoam peanuts in the box are the cause of it.

In Megamind, the eponymous villain accidentally defeats Metroman by trapping him in a room lined with copper, his previously unknown weakness. It turns out to be a trick to allow Metroman to fake his own death.

Lampshaded in Unbreakable. David is a horrible swimmer and nearly drowned once as a kid. Discovering this was evidence reinforcing that he was actually "unbreakable" because all heroes have some sort of weakness. Another character points it out to him, saying "that's your Kryptonite."

In a dream sequence in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (aka H&K Get the Munchies), the bullying sheriff gets to say this terrific line after he gets shot: "Bullets! My only weakness! How did you know?"

In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Toons are invulnerable to conventional damage, but can be injured or killed by a specific blend of paint-and-ink-thinning chemicals, known as "the Dip". Immersion is fatal, and a Toon cab who'd skidded through a puddle of Dip suffered four flat tires and was left limping in pain.

They also can't let the ol' "Shave and a Haircut - Two Bits" go unfinished. Roger ends up ruining their hiding spot because of it.

Lampshaded in Sky High (2005) - instead of arbitrary medical checkups, students are exposed to Green Rocks of different colors to check for weaknesses.

All superheroes in Up, Up and Away! are weakened by tin foil. Too much is fatal. When the main character's friend brings over a meal that's wrapped in foil, the parents (all supers) treat it as a bomb and then bury it in the yard. Of course, the Big Bad finds out about this and then goes to the nearest grocery store.

Exposure to Krypton's native environmental conditions weaken and at first even incapacitate Superman.

Zod's Kryptonians similarly initially lose control of their powers and pass out while trying to adapt to Earth's native atmosphere.

X-Men: Apocalypse: Nightcrawler's teleportation power is blocked by electrical fields. They also interfere with Jean Grey's telekinesis and telepathy.

In Lemonade Joe, Joe is a strong, tough guy with Improbable Aiming Skills. There is one substance that is his Achilles Heel and makes him lose consciousness, leaving him at his enemies' mercy. It's alcohol.

In Dracula Untold, vampires have the standard array of weaknesses: silver, sunlight, wooden stakes, and crosses. Also played with a bit. Crosses only work on permanent vampires, the ones that have fed on humans. Those like Vlad, who will turn back in three days, are unaffected. Stakes, on the other hand, are not only effective but ridiculously so; when Mehmet goes after Vlad with a stake, his armor actually evaporates around it so the stake will hit flesh.

Literature

The Alteriens of Adam R. Brown's Alterien are pretty powerful, but they too have their weaknesses. Iron objects can hurt Alteriens, going so far as cancelling out their ability to absorb kinetic energy. As such, an Alterien can be cut or even killed with iron. It is of note, however, that it takes far more than a cut to kill an Alterien. It would take the same amount of effort as it would for a human using an ordinary knife or sword. This means an Alterien can die if beheaded or cut in half by an iron blade or stabbed multiple times with iron to the point of overtaxing their healing factor. Alteriens such as Oberon are also vulnerable to areas of concentrated dark psychic energy. Whenever Oberon is in or near such an area, he becomes very weak and his ability to absorb energy is reduced.

Star Wars got in on the act in the Expanded Universe by having creatures who "pushed back" the Force (in the case of the ysalamiri), hunted with the Force (thereby making them far more aggressive around Force-users, as with the vornskrs), or who had been "severed" from the Force, and so were unable to be sensed or affected by the Force (like the Yuuzhan Vong). The idea, of course, was creating handicaps so that a simple kidnapping plot, for example, would work against Jedi, who would normally be able to shrug off drugs, sense someone walking up behind them, open locked doors, etc.

Let's not forget the mighty lightsaber's weakness: the totally useless space-metal cortosis, which renders a lightsaber useless for a few seconds.

Oh and for most you can't immerse them in liquids without the blade switching off. Rain's fine though, and Jedi from water worlds fix this problem with some modifications.

Lightsabers have another weakness as well. Bullet based weapons (called "slug throwers" in universe) can't be reflected by a lightsaber as blaster bolts can. All it does is melt the projectile, which means instead of a Jedi having a speeding bullet coming at their face, they have a piece of liquid metal coming at their face.

Parodied by Captain Underpants, who thinks he loses his powers when he's sprayed with starch. It's actually a Placebo Effect, because he only believes it because that's what George and Harold wrote in their comic book.

Crucial in Steelheart, where every super-powered "Epic" has a weakness that will either cancel out their powers or at the very least make them vulnerable to physical attack. Sometimes it's as straightforward as being close to a particular kind of metal, but others get crazier - like one who the characters mention could only be killed by people who are 37 years old.

It's revealed in the second book that an Epic's weakness is related to their greatest fears and traumas. Sourcefield, for example, is vulnerable to Kool-Aid because when she was human her grandparents tried to poison her with it. Megan almost died in a burning house when she was younger, and therefore became vulnerable to fire upon her transformation.

In The Falconer, the traditional cold iron is useless against fairies. However, a special species of thistle is very effective. Which is why said thistle is nearly extinct. The fae were very diligent about that.

Live Action TV

Because the writers of Smallville have small[ville] imaginations, they are unable to construe ways of having Clark Kent face danger without invariably introducing some form of the Kryptonite Factor. They did bring up Clark's vulnerability to magic but rarely use it because of how much one can stomach magic in a thematically sci fi show. This led to the Green Rocks factor exploding with Kryptonite being used for nearly every villain's plot so that it had some reason to be around, e.g. Kryptonite being needed to print money.

Although this formed a mutually Justified Trope with the Smallville Monster of the Week format. Kryptonite produced the baddie/misguided teen that Clark went up against each week and they were actually a challenge (it's hard to use your telepathy to cheat on midterms if Superboy had already punted your ass into the next county) because they were fueled by Kryptonite.

Parodied on the Nickelodeon sketch comedy show All That, where recurring character Superdude's weakness was "lactose intolerance", meaning in his case that merely being in the proximity of dairy products was harmful to him. Naturally all of his opponents were dairy themed.

Or would fight in an area where dairy products would be common. Such as a cow barn.

Another All-That villain got his powers from radiative materials stored in a bucket that landed on his head. Problem was, he couldn't get the bucket off, and his blind attempts at heroism were often... less than ideal.

Non-super example: James May of Top Gear appears to have mild to moderate obsessive-compulsive disorder. His co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson once drove him offstage by rotating the bezel on his watch until it was out of alignment with the face

In Doctor Who, the Doctor's sonic screwdriver was notorious for having no specific guidelines or limits to how it could be used, so much that lazier writers would rely on it too much as a Deus ex Machina to get the Doctor out of any predicament. The Fifth Doctor broke it and went hands free. When the series returned in 2005, two very specific limitations were put on it: a), the screwdriver can't break through a Deadlock Seal, and b), "it doesn't do wood". The latter has been repeatedly lampshaded as "rubbish".

For Sportacus from LazyTown, it's sugar; eating any sugary food renders him immediately comatose, and fresh fruit (despite having a high sugar content) or vegetables (a classification that includes the Sugar Beet) are required to restore him.

Cole on Tracker was vulnerable to Lodestone - it interfered with his life force sensing ability and weakened him a bit.

In Arrow, people who've taken Mirikuru are almost unstoppable; bullets and arrows do nothing and they're strong enough to overpower anything. Their only apparent weakness seems to be explosives; even small ones tend to knock them out for a bit to deal with them. Somewhat downplayed, however, since explosions are likely to kill anyone, but its notably the only thing that's been able to deal with them more than once.

Mythology, Folklore, and Religion

The Chinese tale of the Ten Brothers has ten brothers all born with supernatural powers that they lose when they come into contact with limestone.

Traditionally Cold Iron (which may or may not be the same thing as regular iron) is this to The Fair Folk, serving both to drive them away (hanging an iron horseshoe over your door turns it into an impenetrable barrier to them) as well as being directly harming them (they cannot physically touch iron without being harmed, and iron weapons are the only things capable of killing them)

Werewolves' best-known Kryptonite Factor nowadays is silver, though it's worth to mention that this actually is Newer Than They Think; the idea apparently originated from the Beast of Gevaudan, which according to the myth was killed by a silver bullet, but back then, the reason it succeeded in killing it was believed to be because the creature was of satanic origin and the bullet had been blessed. Before silver became iconic, werewolves' best-known Kryptonite Factor was Wolfsbane (also known as Aconitum), a plant people believed to have various effects on them, including killing them.

The Ravenloft game setting's Van Richten's Guides not only expanded on a lot of creepy D&D monsters' powers, but also gave plenty of them unique Kryptonite Factors of their own. We're not talking about the usual Vampires Hate Garlic stuff; in Ravenloft, even golems have their own personalized Kryptonite, which players have to figure out if they're going to use it against the baddies.

A rather spiteful example in Warhammer 40k with the Grey Knights Space Marines, MagitekSuper Soldiers that comprised the fighting arm of the Ordo Malleus, also called the Daemonhunters. Back in 3rd edition and earlier, Daemons were generally pretty rare but powerful shock troops that were small auxiliary subsets of other armies, like the Eldar with their Avatar and the Chaos Marines with their Chaos Daemons. One usually wouldn't fight an all-daemon army, and if an all-daemon army ever was fielded (usually by the Munchkin, given that this was a major Game Breaker back in the day), it usually was by the player's choice. So if you spammed Daemons and came up against a Daemonhunter player, you were just getting your well-deserved comeuppance for fielding a cheap army. But then Games Workshop went and split the Chaos Marines from the Chaos Daemons into two separate books in one of the most maligned decisions in the history of the hobby (which is saying a lot!), and suddenly you had an entire faction who fell prey to another army almost by virtue of the other army showing up.

As of April 2011, the Grey Knights themselves were given their own book to replace the Daemonhunters Codex. They're still insultingly effective against Daemons, if notmore so. They just got better against other armies.

Grey Knights have more or less became the Elite Mook of the Imperial forces, rather than a dedicated Daemonhunting branch. However they still have a horrendous number of special rules against Daemons and it's even possible to statistically destroy 33% of a Daemon player's army before the game even starts, and that's without tailoring. Before these rules came with an additional rule that benefitted Daemons, to balance out the power. It's gone now.

The official adventure module, Time of Crisis adds a weakness to the Big Bad Omega in the form of the cosmic detonator rods you've been pulling from the various Cosmic bombs which will completely bypass all of his defenses, potentially turning the final battle into a curb stomp.

Essentially required of characters (including NPC monsters) with superhuman toughness and/or regeneration in The Dresden Files. Something — referred to as "the catch" — must exist that bypasses their defenses, and common and/or obvious catches can provide point cost breaks. (Obscure ones like Nicodemus's vulnerability to his own Judas Noose are okay, too, it just means paying the full cost.)

Given the origin of the trope, pretty much any superhero RPG of course has a version of it. Champions for example provides both Vulnerability (where certain attacks are more effective) and Susceptibility (where just exposure to the offending factor is enough to cause ill effects), plus of course the option of applying Limitations to powers so they become cheaper but for example don't work under all circumstances or against certain things.

Most supernatural creatures in New World of Darkness have one, which usually translates as said factor inflicting them aggravated damages:

Vampires' are fire and sunlight. To a lesser extent, stakes are effective too, though that one merely leaves them paralyzed rather than causing any kind of damage.

Werewolves' is, as usual, silver. In-universe, this is explained by Luna, the Moon Spirit, cursing them with this weakness as a punition for killing their progenitor Father Wolf. Because of this, the Forsaken (those who aknowledged their crime and are trying to atone for it) have it slightly less rough and are merely harmed if the substance get in their blood, while the Pure (those who refused responsibility for the crime) can't even touch it without getting hurt.

Prometheans' is fire as well, though they can heal from electricity as a compensation.

Changelings use Cold Iron against their enemies, the True Fae. Powerful Changelings gain frailties as the storybook logic of faerie magic takes root within them; for example, the Summer King of Miami is harmed by the touch of copper and can't rest in a room without open windows.

Beasts have an interesting variant; while they don't have any Kryptonite Factor in their natural state, Heroes possess an ability known as Anathema, which allows them to force one on them. It's commonly believed among Beasts that vampires are vulnerable to fire because their Progenitor was a Beast who suffered an Anathema giving that weakness.

Their main opponents, the All-Consuming Darkness, has a distinct vulnerability to jade, which burns its minions by mere contact.

Video Games

MMORPG Example: In City of Heroes, one can unlock the "Kheldian" Epic Archetype, a form of Energy Beings from outer space that have merged with humans. Though they possess a greater arsenal of powers than "ordinary" heroes, as well as the unique ability of shapeshifting, they also possess a fatal weakness to a particular form of Quantum Energy. Thus, while playing or teaming with one, enemies wielding Quantum Array Guns are mixed in randomly with the ordinary enemies — as are the lethal "Void Hunters", mercenaries specifically trained to hunt and kill Kheldians, adding implants that protect them from Kheldian attacks to their Quantum Array Guns.

This weakness was toned down due to years of player complaints as the Quantum Weapons were considered to be too commonplace for such a powerful attack. Now the quantum weapons deal less damage and only stun the player for a fraction of a second rather than taking over a third of their life and leaving them stunned for too long to defend themselves.

Having a Kheldian on the team will occasionally spawn Shadow Cysts that spawn spirits that ruin accuracy and attack speed of everyone on the team. Oh, and they explode when destroyed. And they're surrounded by Mooks who will probably kill you because you can't aim or fight back. For the most part, Shadow Cyst = Total Party Kill. Thanks Kheldians!

To add insult to injury, Kheldians aren't really particularly overpowered. They're actually pretty lackluster in comparison to the other archetypes, at least without a whole lot of work and expense tricking out your build.

Haar in Fire Emblem 10 is an otherwise One-Man Army mechanically, but (also mechanically) is pretty much always 2 hit killed by thunder mages.

This applies to almost every unit with a weakness in the Fire Emblem games: Attacks with a weapon the target is weak to (this is distinct from the sword>axe>lance>sword thing) triples the weapon's "might" stat. And pray you don't get unlucky enough to get hit by a critical hit by your weakness.

In Tears to Tiara and the sequel Tears to Tiara 2, non-humans on your team are effected whenever the bad guys use Obelisk to unleash the "holy" aura Gravitas.

Runescape lets you create Kryptonite in the form of Bane Ore. This stuff can be tuned to various creatures, and doing so will make it harmful to them. Bane Metal can then be made into arrows and bolts. Balmung, the axe you use to slay Dagganoths during a difficult quest, is revealed to be made of Bane Metal as well.

The Vampyre Quest series brings us Silverthril, an alloy of mithril and silver, which is somewhat effective at slaying immortal Vyrewatch. Later on, weapons crafted from the Blisterwood Tree take this Up to Eleven.

In Scribblenauts, a few creatures are impossible to kill except using some special objects:

Vampires can only be harmed by crosses, stakes, garlic, sunlight and anything with the adjective Holy. Using any of those will instantly slay the vampire (yes, even throwing a clove of garlic to him), but there are useless or very weak weapons against any other foe.

Aberration in El Goonish Shive are difficult to harm using physical attacks, but are weak against magical weapons, to the extent that a Hyperspace Mallet not normally capable of causing any real harm becomes a useful weapon against them.

Web Original

In the superhero spoof Adventure GameThe Frenetic Five versus Strum und Drang, the character Pastiche has various powers, the most notable of which is an ability to become an Intangible Man (woman). Her only weakness: she can't phase through rope.

In Tales of MU, the half-demon Mackenzie may be partially invulnerable, but crossing yourself is the only thing needed to repel her. In peoples of faith, this actually pushes her away and causes unbearable pain.

Incredibly powerful mage Fey in the Whateley Universe is indeed one of The Fair Folk, and so she has a weakness to cold iron. And synthetics, which give her really nasty rashes. She has wardrobe problems because of that one.

Played with by Phase, who's managed to slip a fake Kryptonite Factor into her official file. For the record, it's "dark chocolate administered orally".

Upon entering melee range of any anti-dragon Noble Phantasm, Uther from Fate/Nuovo Guerra suffers a rank-down for all of his stats, in addition to any damage bonuses they have against him.

Fidget, a Kid Hero speedster from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, takes actual physical damage if you tie him down and prevent him from moving. If you stop him from moving, his power literally builds up and starts vibrating his cells to pieces.

Going along with being an Expy of Superman, Splendid from Happy Tree Friends has kryptonut in one episode, which is basically kryptonite shaped as an acorn. Exposure to the radiation from it causes him to lose his powers and fall ill with what resembles the stomach flu. At the end of the episode, he crushes the kryptonut and accidentally inhales the powder, causing him to vomit uncontrollably as the skin on his face falls off. This (and another instance confirmed by Word of God) is the only time he has ever died, as nothing else can hurt him.

Western Animation

Interestingly, in Superman: The Animated Series, it was originally planned that Supergirl, being in this iteration not from Krypton, but rather the sister-planet of Argos, would not have a weakness to Kryptonite. By the time of Justice League Unlimited, though, the weakness was firmly in place.

Spoofed in an episode of Freakazoid!, in which bad guy Guttierez tries presenting a variety of weaknesses (the color yellow, water, and kryptonite itself), failing each time, as Freakazoid points out that that's some other iconic character's weakness.

Freakazoid himself has two rather obscure and ridiculous weaknesses, though: he can be imprisoned in a cage with graphite bars charged with negative ions, and he has an aversion to "poo gas".

Freakazoid: Dumb, dumb, dumb! Never tell the villain how to trap you in a cage! Guttierez: You probably shouldn't have helped us build it, either. Freakazoid: I know! Dumb!

Though as Guttierez pointed out, no one likes "poo gas".

Captain Planet has a very odd weakness in that it's pollution, the very thing he's trying to fight. It'd be like Superman deciding to specialize solely on kryptonite cleanup duty.

His Evil Counterpart Captain Pollution, is weak against pure wind, water, earth, and fire while being composed of concentrated pollution. This makes it interesting in that they're literally walking kryptonite to one another.

Captain Planet was also shown to be weak to intense hatred in at least one episode. Adolf Hitler managed to completely disable him just by glaring at him. However, hate is regularly shown to be the pollution for Heart as even one of the rings used to summon Captain Pollution was Hate which was the negative copy of the Heart ring.

In a Bad Future segment on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, rebels led by Irwin use frogs as weapons, as they've learned that they are giant worm/planetary tyrant Future Mandy's Kryptonite Factor. They're wrong, as Mandy had leaked that information herself.

In an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures spoofing the Superman movies, "Super-Babs" was weak to carrot cake — she couldn't stop eating it, and the villain continued feeding it to her until she was too overweight to fly after him.

The Justice League cartoon downplayed or ignored the Kryptonite Factor of every character except Superman. Green Lantern's vulnerability to yellow was never actually mentioned (though occasionally, if you watch closely, you'll see yellow stuff getting through his force barricades). J'onn J'onnz had no particular vulnerability or phobia regarding fire (though he had a bad case of The Worf Effect in the first season, and he would occasionally struggle in situations where there was a lot of fire). Aquaman never seemed overly discomfited by being out of water for extended periods. Wonder Woman... well, she'd lost most of her Kryptonite Factors by the time the series started anyway. Hawkgirl eventually gained a Kryptonite Factor that was more emotional than physical and ended up resolved by series end anyway. The Flash almost never used his powers to their full extent (not unlike Superman), with the idea that he never really pushed himself to excel...and when he did, he was given a convenient excuse not to again. Batman's "Kryptonite Factor"—that he was a perfectly mortal human—came up time and again, but, being Batman, doesn't really count.

When Lex Luthor was in the body of The Flash ("The Great Brain Robbery"), he took down Green Lantern with a cup of (yellow) pudding.

Fair enough, though, they used the weaknesses against Amazo, particularly Kryptonite.

Heroes actually abused this, by having Martian Manhunter pretend to be Superman in front of Lex Luther to get a confession for a crime.

The Thunder Cats are vulnerable to "thundranium", a rare mineral that is pretty much a poorly-disguised knock-off of kryptonite.

In the Teen Titans cartoon, Starfire is allergic to metallic chromium. The allergy is more dangerous to others than herself, as it causes her to sneeze energy blasts. It even turns out to be an advantage, as it allows the team to track a chromium-based bomb. It's also a big case of artistic license, as chromium is used in a lot of common technologies.

Imaginary Man, a superhero imaginary friend on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, is weakened by girly things, particularly flowers. Similarly, his evil nemesis Nemesis, loses her powers whenever her hair is messed up. It later turns out they were thought up by a boy and his sister, respectively, just to annoy each other.

The Sushi Pack are weakened by heat, and since they have a tendency to announce it, their most recurrent villains usually keep a couple of heat lamps around.

On The Mighty B!, Bessie (who fancied herself a would-be superhero) once tried to find her Kryptonite Factor by going through every food item she could think of alphabetically. By the time she got to zucchini she was so full that she became violently ill, and thus thought that zucchini was her weakness.

In The Powerpuff Girls the titular girls lose their powers if they come in contact with Antidote X.

On Batman: The Brave and the Bold, when Batman received powers on the planet Zur-En-Arrh, the supervillain Rothul quickly figures out the new Superman-like Batman's weakness: Quartz.

Parodied in a Robot Chicken sketch when after a fireball destroys another enemy, it also melts half of Composite Santa's body.

The animated film Superman: Doomsday contains an almost amusing example in that even Superman needed Kryptonite to defeat his clone with identical powers. Admittedly, the real Superman isn't quite at full strength at this point.

Superman: You have all my strengths... and weaknesses.

Specifically parodied in one episode of the Earthworm Jim animated series. Jim is helpless against the substance known as Wormtonite (which Peter Puppy claims they found at the back of the fridge, and might once have been cheese). Bizarrely, its effects include turning Jim into a bowl of candied corn.

Spider-Man would occasionally make sly references to a "guy who's allergic to green rocks".

Haggarium drains the power of Voltron in Voltron Force, as well as its component lions.

The Simpsons: Bart once discovered principal Skinner's allergy to peanuts, and used it to practically enslave him. Skinner soon learns that Bart has an allergy too; Shrimp. They end up in a "sword" fight with sticks with their opponent's kryptonite on the end.

Danny Phantom is weakened by a flower called Blood Blossom. It removes his powers while causing him extreme pain. That's not to mention the various weapons his parents and Vlad have devised that can remove his powers or hurt him while he is intangible.

Ectoranium, introduced in ther Series Finale, is a green glowing rock that ghosts can't touch without being painfully shocked; they can still phase through it, which is an important plot point. Kind of an obvious Expy of Kryptonite, but in this case the Ectoranium is as much of a danger to humans as ghosts since it's a large asteroid that got knocked off course towards Earth.

WordGirl loses her powers and gift of perfect vocabulary when exposed to lexonite, a radioactive mineral from her home planet.

The 1987 version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles parodied this in the episode "Michelangelo Meets Bug Man". In it, Michelangelo finds Bug Man, who turned into the superhero when he got angry, wrapped in chains that were laced with his main weakness before being thrown down into the sewer. His weakness? "Leestanite"! note The name is not an accident: it was a play on famous comic book creator Stan Lee.

In My Little Pony 'n Friends, Grogar is incredibly powerful and seemingly nothing can hurt him, but once a certain bell is rung, he is automatically banished back to the Shadow World.

In Avatar: The Last Airbender, earthbenders can't bend metal (until Toph discovers how). In The Legend of Korra, metalbending techniques have become widespread, so the new kryptonite is platinum. Metalbending works by bending impurities within the metal, and platinum doesn't have enough impurities to bend.

In the season 6 finale of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Thorax reveals that Queen Chrysalis has a throne carved from an ancient dark stone that absorbs all forms of magic that get too close to it except for Changeling magic. Not even alicorn magic or draconequus magic can resist it. This also explains how she and her changelings captured the Mane 6 and the Royal Family so easily in the previous episode, a single piece of the throne would make them all helpless and unable to defend themselves.

While it is much less known, chocolate is dangerous for cats too, though cats are much less likely to eat it than dogs are.

Any human with a severe food allergy. Peanuts are a frequent culprit here, with some unlucky folks unable to be in the same room as peanut products without going into respiratory shock.

Diabetics have a similar reaction to sugar.

Salt to snails/slugs.

Freshwater fish in saltwater and vice versa due to osmosis.

The New England Patriots and Bernard Pollard. Pollard has destroyed the Patriots so many times that his fan nickname is the "Anti Patriot" and the "Patriot Killer". Pollard is a good player and is generally well-regarded, but it's bizarre coincidence that Pollard has done the biggest damage to the Patriots.

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